Please spare a thought for the poor woman who broke an $800,000 sculpture while taking a selfie

Remember that time you were round at a friend’s house and accidentally smashed one of their nice wine glasses? You felt awful, didn’t you, even though it was a really close mate and they honestly weren’t that bothered by it, you couldn’t help but feel guilty.

Well then spare a thought for this poor, poor woman. This woman who has accidentally smashed an $800,000 sculpture while taking a selfie in the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. Eight hundred thousand dollars. Just smashed, everywhere, in front of everyone.

There’s no getting away from it; to this woman, this is probably the worst thing that has ever happened. She will probably lie in bed at night and remember this moment every day for months. There probably won’t ever be a day again when she doesn’t briefly remember the fact that she once accidentally broke an $800,000 sculpture while taking a selfie. Eight hundred thousand dollars.

The next time she moves jobs and has to stand up in front of everyone at the end of her first week, and tell “one interesting fact about herself”, she will tell this story. Not because she wants to, but because it will be the only interesting thing about herself she can remember. She’ll unwillingly define herself as the woman who once smashed an $800,000 sculpture while taking a selfie, because there’s just no coming back from it. No moving on. Eight hundred thousand dollars.

We’ve not even mentioned the worst bit about this story yet though. There’s a worst bit. See, the sculpture was of a pumpkin, and she smashed it. You see where this is going already, don’t you? We all know that band, that really famous band called the Smashing Pumpkins, who will now follow this woman around for the rest of her life. She probably doesn’t even like them. If she did, she doesn’t anymore. Every time a new person finds out about the story, they will make a Smashing Pumpkins joke, and they will think they’re being hilarious. They will think they’re the first person to ever make this joke, and it will be terrible.